By Suleiman Al-Khalidi
AMMAN (Reuters) – The Syrian Army said on Monday that the country’s air defenses had intercepted “Israeli aggression” over the capital, Damascus, in the latest intensified bombing of Iranian targets inside the country in the past two months.
State media gave no details of what was hit by the Israeli Air Force. Israeli military aircraft flew over the Golan Heights to hit targets on the outskirts of the capital, an army statement said, not to mention casualties, but adding air defenses shot down most of the missiles.
“Our air defenses continue to repel Israeli missile attacks over the capital’s skies,” the Syrian army said in a statement.
A Syrian military defector said the bombings hit a large army division in the city of Kiswa, almost 14 km (8.7 miles) south of the capital, in an extensive area where Iranian-backed militias have a dominant presence.
Witnesses heard major explosions in the far south of Damascus, an area where Iranian-backed militias are entrenched, residents said.
Israel’s military did not immediately comment on the latest attack, but its senior military officers acknowledged the escalation of attacks within Syria with the aim of ending Tehran’s entrenched military presence in Syria.
Israeli Defense Force chief of staff Aviv Kochavi said at the end of last year that his country’s missile strikes “delayed Iran’s entrenchment in Syria”, hitting more than 500 targets in 2020.
Western intelligence sources say Iran’s military influence has expanded in Syria in recent years, prompting Israel to step up its campaign to prevent its archrival from establishing an important military base along its border.
Iran’s militias, led by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, now dominate vast areas in eastern, southern and northwestern Syria, as well as several suburbs around Damascus. They also control Lebanese-Syrian border areas.
Israel, which in the past two months has carried out some of its biggest attacks inside Syria, has focused on Al Bukamal, the Syrian city that controls the border post on the main Baghdad-Damascus highway.
The expansion of the military campaign was part of the so-called “campaign within the wars”, which, according to Israeli generals and regional intelligence sources, was tacitly approved by the United States.
Operations aimed at preventing Tehran from shifting Syria’s balance of power in its favor have gradually eroded Iran’s extensive military power without triggering a major increase in hostilities, say regional intelligence sources.
(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Additional reporting by Kinda Makieh; Editing by Peter Cooney, Jacqueline Wong and Gerry Doyle)